


Variation 3

by seekingferret



Series: The Jessica Goldberg Variations [4]
Category: Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare, Post-Biblical Jewish RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:50:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/pseuds/seekingferret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You had to know it was inevitable that I would write this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Variation 3

The first time Shmuel ben Yitzhak meets Iscah bat Shylock, she is on the wrong side of the mechitza. She wears the clothing of a man, and her short-cropped hair is topped with the traditional skullcap of the Jews of Italy, but she doesn't fool Rabbi Palache for more than ten seconds. He suppresses a laugh as he recites the Kaddish for the whole congregation, forcing his attention back to his intervention on behalf of the Jews of Amsterdam. They are depending on him, and he takes that responsibility seriously. 

She introduces herself after the service as Yitzhak ben Shylock, formerly of Venice, and the coincidence of her sharing his father's name is enough of an excuse to warrant the invitation for her to partake of Malca's cooking that evening. Her Dutch is nonexistent and her Spanish childish and half-comprehensible, but she speaks the language of the sea with clarity and fluency. Her father za''l, she explains, was a moneylender in Venice, with many connections to the trading ships of the Venetian main. She is quiet through the meal, as the conversation flows from Torah to hitch knots. She eats efficiently and quickly, but without betraying immodest hunger. 

Shmuel waits until after dinner, when the rest of their guests have left, the children have gone to bed, and it is only Malca, Shmuel, and Iscah sitting around the candlelit table, before he lays all his cards on the table. She's not fooling him, she's not fooling Malca, and it is obvious that she could use some help, if only she would trust him. For a second Malca fears she is about to cry, watching as the young woman stares her husband down, but the more she looks at those bright green eyes the more they remind Malca of her own mother. She's tough, this one. She will only cry if it would be to her advantage. 

At last, her eyes still dry, she does fold, and the whole story comes out. Her name is not Yitzhak but Iscah, though she is the only daughter of her father Shylock, executed by order of the Duke of Venice for daring to insist a Christian should uphold his word to a Jew. She had abandoned her father's faith and married a Christian boy, she says flatly, her eyes boring in on Shmuel as if daring him to say something. He remains quiet and patient. It had been an exciting time. A man she loved, a new start on a new life of freedom, fortunes earned and then lost in the markets of the Italian cities. Then her husband had acquired a taste for alcohol, and then, a taste for beating his wife. She escaped north, up the Rhine, dressing as a man to mitigate the dangers of the open road.

She is ready to be a woman again, Malca senses, but she isn't sure how. She is ready to be a Jew again, Shmuel senses, but she isn't sure how.

They talk all through the night, many hundreds of words of disputatious advice. When she leaves in the morning, she has an appointment with the landlady of a boarding house for young Jewish women, a letter of recommendation and introduction to a seamstress who owes Malca a favor, and a standing offer from Shmuel to dress up as Yitzhak once more and crew out with him on his next voyage. Malca isn't entirely sure that he's joking.


End file.
